April 13, 2010

Crazy Old Playthings: An Internet Treasury Of Animals Pulling Kids Around

Wow, DT reader Sara either turned her kids loose in the street for the afternoon, or the whole clan has mad Googlin' skillz, because after Benjamin Harris's grandchildren's goat wagon, she sent a veritable parade of crazy animals pulling kids in wagons of yore:

The Turkey Wagons are just the start [below, unidentified, via laughgenerator]

No problem, here's an ostrich pulling a cartful of kids at a zoo in 1929 [via messybeast.com]

And here's a pig cart from 1910, clearly a banner year for exotic kids' draught animals. [via messybeast.com]

They're not strictly carts, so I'll leave it to you to visit messybeast.com and see the Laplander kid riding in the reindeer basket, and the dad with his kids on the yak. With the ostriches and the zebras on the same page, the whole thing feels like the Swiss Family Robinson.

Sheep cart pulling [a?] Yap Yap in ancient New South Wales makes me think Babe was not 100% documentary-accurate in its depiction of sheep/dog tensions. [via state library of nsw's flickr]

The craziest thing about this 1930 photo? Not that it's the only entry on the "Dogcarts & Lioncarts" page [via messybeast.com]. Or the warning: "Once it is fully grown, it would not be safe to harness a lion to give cart rides to children."